WhatsApp Investment Scam: Cases of online fraud are increasing rapidly in India. In the last few months, thousands of citizens have fallen prey to the tricks of these cyber scammers. Most of them are elderly people who have no idea about the digital space. Recently, another such case has come to light in which a 63-year-old man from Hyderabad lost Rs 50 lakh under a stock market scheme.
The fraud started when the person saw the Stock Discussion Group. It was a WhatsApp group whose admin was a person named Kunal Singh. He described himself as a reputed financial advisor, and said that all the people he has advised on stock trading have got excellent returns. He described the 2022 Stock Classes as successful and said that some stocks have given returns of up to 500 percent. Falling prey to this deception, the person decided to join the online classes.
These classes were conducted through links shared in WhatsApp groups. Here the scammers would give advice on market trends and specific stocks. The scammers then redirected the victim and others to invest on a platform called Skyrim Capital. Initially, the victim was encouraged to make small investments which yielded good profits. This made him believe that the scheme was legitimate.
Then gradually the scammers convinced him to make bigger investments, which led him to invest a total of Rs 50 lakh. He transferred this money to the names and accounts of several beneficiaries to avoid suspicion and tracking. Then when the person tried to withdraw his profits, he realized that he had been scammed because the scammers refused to let him withdraw.
According to the police, such frauds are increasing rapidly, especially scams have become very active through messaging platforms. People are advised to report any suspicious online financial activity to the National Cyber Crime Helpline 1930 or the portal cybercrime.gov.in.
